Tuesday, April 28, 2015

It has come to my attention that one of the trolls or sockpuppetts commenting harshly on genre websites is named Joe McDermott.

This is not me. I have a ridiculously common name. McDermott is one of the most populous names of Ireland, and any Biblical Catholic male name including Nehemiah and Ephraim (I literally have a cousin named Ephraim) are to be expected in front of McDermott all over the world in some great quantity what with the traditional size of traditional Irish families. We do run out of names.

I am currently recovering from some minor surgery, and I am fairly certain my drugs aren't suddenly so good that I would be cheering on Heinlein. I also didn't have any good drugs leading up to the surgery. I dislike most Heinlein quite a lot. It is like Ayn Rand: a thrilling discovery at 15, that intellectually collapses by 17 because of problematic ideas and (more importantly) tedious workmanlike prose shoving bad ideas in my face.

Anyway, I have a common name. There are many of us. We are legion. We also probably don't agree about anything regarding this stupid genre thing. Any comment left by a Joe McDermott that is not in complete agreement with Cat Valente (whose LiveJournal thing is dead right on the money) can be assumed to be some other Joe McDermott, angrier, I presume, and/or a sockpuppy attempting to damage my reputation.

Don't be a sockpuppy, people. There are much greater battles to fight in this world.